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Lisa Shepherd

because as they make more money through marketing, they
want to do more of it.

Many companies wonder about the breakdown between
marketing staff and marketing programs (e.g. trade shows,
print advertising, pay-per-click, SEO). This metric used to be a
good gauge of the efficiency of a marketing team. Companies
would aim to get their staff costs down to a percentage of total
budget. Smaller companies tended to have staff costs around
50%, and larger companies (with larger spend and therefore
efficiency) would spend closer to 20%.

The 2012 Marketing Sherpa study indicated that 70% of the
1,745 B2B company participants spent between 5% and 30%
of their budget on in-house staff. The remaining 30% of firms
spent 30% to 90%.

This data demonstrates a shift in marketing behaviour. B2B
tactics that involve labour (e.g. content development and
social media) are on the rise, while tactics that involve tangible
goods (e.g. brochures and pens) are in decline. I expect this
shift will continue, and there will be fewer questions around the
breakdown of budgets and more questions on overall ROI. At
the end of the day, it’s all about how much profitable revenue
the marketing program generates.

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© 2012 Lisa Shepherd